Security industry needs to abandon fear and trepidation: RSA chief

• Organisations must adapt to digital interdependence
• RSA advocates four-part Intelligence Driven Security stack

SOCIETY’S digital interdependence now requires new norms of behaviour, more effective security measures, and greater cooperation, said Art Coviello (pic), executive vice president of EMC Corp and executive chairman of RSA, EMC’s security division.
 
Kicking off the RSA Conference Asia Pacific & Japan 2014 in Singapore on July 22, Coviello addressed the security implications of today’s digitally interdependent world, RSA said in a statement.
 
“For too long, we have approached our interdependence with fear and trepidation,” he said. “We have viewed it as a threat to our organisations.
 
“The truth is anything but. If we begin to engage with and leverage our interdependence, a world of benefits opens up for us,” he said.
 
Coviello stressed that while driving advocacy for digital norms, organisations must also adapt to more effectively defend against the expanding attack surface and evolving threat environment exacerbated by digital interdependence.
 
He said organisations need to fortify their security measures across the three key areas -- visibility, analysis and action.
 
Security organisations need to develop deep visibility, beyond what traditional solutions currently deliver, to enable a better understanding into how information is being accessed and used, and to expose vulnerabilities across the enterprise.
 
Coviello also underscored the urgency for more advanced analysis capabilities to decipher “patterns in the noise” to detect and ultimately thwart stealthy attacks.
 
Together, deep visibility and advanced analysis enable security organisations to take the right actions needed to actively engage in faster, more seamless defensive measures.
 
Meanwhile Amit Yoran, RSA’s senior vice president of Unified Products, spoke about how to operationalise ‘Intelligence Driven Security’ through a four-part Intelligence Driven Security “stack.”
 
When Intelligence Driven Security technologies are embedded in an organisation’s security operations stack, unparalleled visibility results, he argued.
 
Organisations are then equipped to better analyse the situation, spot anomalies, and execute a plan to prevent or mitigate potential damage from cyber-attacks.
 
According to Yoran, the Intelligence Driven Security stack starts with policy-based authentication and identity management, access control, and governance.
 
“Our adversaries will continue to adapt their attack methods, faster than our traditional methods can keep up,” Yoran said.
 
“We need to give up the losing battle and instead shift the rules of the game so we fight them on our own terms.  We can fight them more effectively, and more importantly, we can win,” he added.
 
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